Pokemon Legends Arceus on Switch - Are the Tech Criticisms Justified?
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2022
- A revolution for the series, Arceus is built on fully explorable 3D environments in which to capture and battle Pokemon. It's unlike anything developer Game Freak has produced, though as a Switch title, many have criticised the technical bar of quality here - especially compared to other games on Nintendo's platform. Are the complaints fair? Tom finds out.
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You know they are justified when you realize Xenoblade Chronicles X came on the Wii U in 2015 and looks like a generation ahead of this game.
Yet it runs at a lower resolution on switch and woo
@@GamingThesis I don't think you understand, the switch is more powerful and has a more modern architecture, and even before taking that into account, they have an absolutely unparalleled amount of money to work on this game yet it came out like this
@@GamingThesis Well Breath of the wild was made for Wii u, Runs ok on the switch, looks away better than this.
@@GamingThesis
Thats not true whatsover. The Wii U uses a Power PC CPU based on the late 90s (!). The Switch has a VASTLY more modern CPU which allows it to do a lot more using less resources. The Switch also has 3 times more RAM available for games which helps in all kinds of ways. The only thing where the Wii U can somewhat be comparable with the Switch is the GPU, but even that one doesn't match the Switches.
@@The_Ostrich Yet the Switch consistently has middling improvements to Wii U ports, you're really overselling that hardware, lol.
Give them a break, it's just a small billion dollar indie dev with incredibly close ties to Nintendo.
lmao
Should’ve bought more card packs, suckas
GameFreak is a relatively small studio though. Making lots of money doesn't mean that they have thousands of employees at hand.
@@LocrianDorian So!? Please bro, tell me so? So is ok!? Please bro tell me, give me youre answer, please, so is all ok, is cool that the pokemon franchise is shit because they are small and this thing cant be change, please tell me
@@associazioneotaku lmao hahahahahaha
The issue is that Game Freak is a AAA company role-playing as an indie dev.
It's a common known fact that Game Freak is absurdly understaffed, with last counts at a mere 167, which sounds reasonable until you realize this number includes literally EVERYBODY from administration to sanitation, not just the devs.
They're expected to churn out games at the rate Ubisoft does, but with a tiny, single team, rather than massive conglomerates of teams across the world rotating games so that something new is always in development.
And boy-fucking-howdy, does this fact SHOW. The lack of editorial work in scripts, the lack of polish in visuals, and the wildly inconsistent quality of the gameplay itself.
TPC definitely deserves blame for pushing these yearly releases, but GF management needs to snap back to reality and take advantage of the money and prestige that better devs and better studios could only dream of acquiring.
Yeah if only like, their games sold tens of millions of copies, they could like... "HIRE" more people
@@AdnanCucak Why would they spent more money to hire more people if lazy cashgrab always works for these fanboys? Just keep shoving shitty game down the fanboys throat, stonks.
@@reighaillness You speak the truth
They just need to tell game freak to fk off.
Get bethesda or some other more competant company working on an open world 3d game.
I think the biggest issue with Gamefreak's games at this point is probably time, not budget. All the money in the world isn't going to buy them another year to develop their games, and in the time it takes Nintendo to develop a game like BotW, Gamefreak has had to make Let's go Pikachu and Eevee, Sword and Shield and all it's DLC, and Legends Arcues.
The artifacting in caves was the most jarring for me.
@@GamingThesis yeah at 8:18 around the player and pokemon. looks absolutely horrible.
Yeah that was big for me. Most other things didnt bother me, but the artifacting was just inexcusable
Yeah I’ve never seen artifacting in a game that bad to the point that it’s outlining characters
I haven't noticed that yet. Been using an mClassic to battle the artifacting. Hopefully it won't cause some weird texture jerking like I've been noticing with the grass.
The caves were weird. Not only did it have artifacting, there were some parts where the floor didn't match with the walls and you can see gaps leading to the void outside of the map.
I'm bummed you didn't highlight the resolution upscale technique they use when the game drops to 900p, as it uses a nearest neighbor scaling to upscale to 1080p which results in uneven pixels and makes the image look even worse than it already looks. In all my years I don't think I've ever encountered a game that uses this upscale technique when it drops its resolution and I'm morbidly amazed that Gamefreak actually implemented it like this.
So it’s literally just enlarging the image like an old copy of photoshop would when you’d resize the canvas? That’s crazy
Huh, any video/article that explains this technique used on the game?
@@RikuoTanaka Not to self-advertise, and it's in german, but I show examples in my Arceus video at around 25:45
@@TheHulksMistress Any game with resolution scaling does this. Arceus just uses the wrong scaling method that accentuates the jagged pixel edges
I prefer the jaggies to a softer look.
It’s interesting coming back here after the Pokémon Scarlet and Violet release. This game sadly looks head and shoulders better than what I’m seeing in those right now.
It's like gamefreak is punishing their fans by saying "You dare criticize our last game? Then take this!!" As they release Scarlet...
Horizon Zero Dawn was also the first Open World for Guerilla Games.
You don't see people use that as an excuse because the game runs well and is polished.
That's a shitty excuse for higher ups not allocating enough ressources to the game
Maybe they held back resources not knowing how the community will accept this new direction
@@kyrongreenidge5523 bruh its Pokémon fans, they'd be happy with a game where you run on a flat, endless textureless plane as long as there was a pikachu every other mile and still say "imagine what the next game will look like". And it would still sell 10 million copies in a week
@@FROEZOEN facts lol but I'm sure the next entry will be epic af
@@kyrongreenidge5523 Wish I could say I agree but we've legit been saying that since Let's Go when they said "The next entry will be a traditional Pokemon Title" and ended up looking worse than Let's go...
Guerilla have been an AAA-developer essentially since they started, with their games being technical standouts on every console. Adapting to Horizon was just expanding on what they already did. Gamefreak made their name on 2d titles, to go to something like this is a massive shift, and one they don't seem to want to do properly, but it's a completely different story than Guerilla.
The thing that keeps happening to me is the grass will start having a seizure during battles, it gets real annoying.
Same with me, it only started happening a few hours into the game
Same. It's really distracting.
A fellow battle network fan. Hi
Ive been having that issue and lighting issues, where it abruptly adjusts from light and dark
Megaman battle network, nice.
I'm actually very surprised they didn't talk about the low frame rate animations.
This is often done in games for characters in the background, because it's not that noticeable and saves performance, but in Legends Arceus it is way too agressive, kicking in at medium distances even when the character is in full view in the middle of the screen, leaving them looking like slide shows.
I mean, Pokemon are animating at 3.75fps when they're more than 20 meters away from you, that's just unacceptable.
He must not have seen that gyrados flickering in mid air at 2 fps in the first area at night. What was supposed to be a breath taking moment similar to the dragons in botw just made me burst out laughing
@@EVPointMaster didn't see I could expand the comment. My bad. It is really bad with flying Pokemon
same happens in mario odyssey and xbc is why, it's very normal for models further away to move at a lower framerate, most games do this in fact.
@@kenrulei09 Please read the whole comment.
Every optimizations in this game feel overkill and badly balanced, but that one is the most jarring.
I really like the game. But you make a good point, for a company that basically prints money, this game should be more polished. In the next game I'd like to see the player character to be able to ride your own Pokemon instead of ride Pokemon.
Yeah Game Freak does print money. For Nintendo and Creatures. I've typed all this out so just do me a favor and find all my replies if you care to know what I mean
I don't want to defend them, the game should definitely look better, but it is worth noting that the video games make up a fairly small portion of their profits. Most of the revenue comes from Pokémon merch
@@tolaut they should’ve make something like pixelmon reforged but more polished
Tbh alot of the pokemon games lately feel abit rushed as they seem to work on a few titles which is normal but not when gamefreak have around 200 staff . I am enjoying the game alot but yea it looks rough but will thelearn as it going to sell and print alot of cash!?!
Game is fun, that's it.
As for the overworld, even S&S it's graphics looked more pleasing, also in the Wild Area.
Aside from that, what I actually dislike the most is the new art style of the Pokémon itself in Legend of Arceus, in S&S it looked good, but now a lot of Pokémon look off, worse art style wise than ever before.
Anyhow the Switch is capable of much more than this, but we already knew that.
I think lighting is a problem too. Sometimes it looks good, sometimes all the colors look like puke.
He showed that it was. Especially with the cave entrance example.
shitty rim light added every where to “hide” the flat lighting in the open world, I feel they couldn’t come up with a real-time gi solution so end up with this
I genuinely haven't seen a single clip or screenshot of this game that didn't look terrible.
No lighting or shading, very very bad
Twilight Princess for the Gamecube is from 2006 and the shading and lighting blew me away, for me, it looks better than TESB Oblivion.
To hammer home the comparison of BOTW to pokemon legends, people seem to forget BOTW was a Wii U game that ALSO launched with the switch, the game was always designed to be on Wii U. So technically BOTW was made for hardware 10 years older than pokemon legends and they still can't keep up, sad really.
Wii U also looks better than the Switch. The latter has a god awful green-ish fog.
@@saricubra2867 I know right, I’ve always preferred playing BotW on Wii U 🤷🏻♂️
@@MudSluggerBP I never liked BOTW as a game to begin with, i will never forgive Nintendo for removing proper Wii U gamepad support like we watched with Miyamoto on that 2014 demo (that looked better than the final game for some reason), then the missleasing trailer with supposedly an epic story...
Dude.. most major RPGS from 10 years ago look a generation ahead of this.
@@saricubra2867 botw on Wii u runs at a lower resolution though and suffers from more stuttering
I liked the comparisons of BOTW, Xenoblade and Monster Hunter to Arceus. It's nuts how much better those games look.
It's weird how they didn't even mention that the SSR on water surfaces don't even reflect the sky, instead showing a black void.
Also the embarrassing way they render grass by making it a 2D texture that always faces the camera, similar to the way Mario 64 handles trees.
Maybe it's better than the previous mainline games visually. But they have always been consistently behind the curve of other Nintendo titles and can't even guarantee smooth performance. Maybe a talented studio like Monolithsoft needs to help them out with the next entry to ensure they can polish it up visually to the AAA status the series commands.
I reckon after Breath of the Wild 2 and the next monolith soft game are released they should do a joint development with Game Freak to make a legitimate 3D Pokémon game.
Yeah they helped heavily with BoTW and then made XC2 with half there staff. so if anyone could help em fix there games is Monolithsoft
@@Dottorilla I wonder if Monolithsoft helping BOTW also made that game loose some of that Zelda integrity with the dungeon design and other things like that...
I prefer Gamefreak learning how to do stuff than another studio messing around.
@@saricubra2867 You mean change the formula to be one of the best games of this generation? Yeah. They did help. You guys are like the same folks who complain about FF not being turn based anymore
@@saricubra2867 Don't think so. Monolithsoft only handle BoTW's world design and teach the team their black magic in optimization, but we don't know their involvement in BoTW2. But, GF should just need to be taught their black magic in optimization and it should be fine.
Watching this after Scarlet and Violet dropped. SV makes this game look like a masterpiece. Heck, even Sword and Shield looks better in some areas and that game looked pretty bad.
Xenoblade chronicles 2 came out the same year as zelda BOTW, not 2 years after
Yep, he perhaps meant Torna, but i dont think that was even two years after
And yet BotW is still the only one that Monolithsoft helped work on that actually performs well in visual presentation for both Switch modes. I'll still be baffled by that.
@@rexthesheep 6:55
It’s impressive that the most successful media franchise in the world produces games that don’t even come close to matching 5 year old titles on the same console.
Right, say whatever you want with no research. The video games make up a FRACTION of the billions this franchise makes. How dense do you have to be to think much of that money even goes to game freak who make the fuckin game??? Nintendo needs to step it up and stop only caring about their internal developers. Zelda, Fire Emblem, Mario, etc all get more love and care put into it than Pokemon. Its literally always been like that. This time though, game freak did it themselves. This game outside of visuals is incredible and exactly what this franchise has needed for the past 26 years. This is the true Pokemon game to me. So so much more than just collecting animals and making them fight for the very first time. Fuck the graphics who cares??? Get Nintendo and Creatures to help them out even a LITTLE and they might just be able to put out insane visuals. Regardless, the animations and pokemon models are top notch for the franchise. I can be insanely grateful for this. Not to mention the amount of careful references and lore expansion sprinkled all over this game. To belittle it just for technical issues is just dumb. Did you also know that before recently, game freak might as well be an indie company? They must have gotten a lot of employees in the past few years but in case you didnt know, they are fairly small and outside of Pokemon, they've made games that have faded into complete obscurity. You'll get great models and animations with game freak, but just not visuals yet. They're trying. There's only so much a dev team can do on their own. See Cyberpunk 2077.
@@zerosolis6664 From what I have seen it's just same old pokemon game with no innovation. Can't even do voice acting in 2022 lol.
The problem is Game Freak being lazy developers who know that no matter how low quality their games are, they will still sell millions regardless thus they take advantage of that fact. Either that or Game Freak truly are incompetent.
@@hexerei02021 Well you clearly haven't played it, which makes that categorically incorrect. May as well stop at "from what I've seen". Headass.
@@Eyeolus lol show us the voice acting then and stop sniffing copium.
The Switch has 3.2 Gb available RAM and yet they couldn't manage the pop-ins of objects in a game that has a VERY low geometric complexety. The first thing GameFreak needs to master is memory managment...
3d models are pretty small in general.
Mastery isn’t the problem I’m sure, they need reason to put the effort in. If someone’s being paid a fortune to do very little, most wouldn’t give themselves more work to do
@@TheHulksMistress exactly. It's the higher ups that are the problem. Least work for the most money. This is what happens when any industry becomes as lucrative as games have become
Remember, it took Iwata's help to fit all the content G/S had on it. Gamefreak was just going to make Kanto appear as a smaller scaled down version.
I'm sure GameFreak is grateful that UA-cam commenters with zero game development experience are teaching them how to develop games, lmao.
I just wish they'd give GF more time or resources or... whatever is needed. Pokemon is so big to just let it go this way. Treating this as the "first open world" and excusing all of this is weird given... Sword and Shield... also struggled from all of this.
Game Freak is just a terrible dev. They need to move Pokémon to a better developer.
@@trillyoung9664 gamefreak could be a better dev but I have sinking suspicion that the corporate culture in japan prevents them from hiring new talent or accepting any new ideas
Nintendo isn't the one not providing resources to gamefreak, gamefreak just like to make games as cheaply as possible
@@BP-dn9nv These games are not cheap to make. Drop the cap already.
@@Eyeolus they are extremely cheap if you compare them to the income of Pokémon Company.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 came out the same year as Breath of the Wild. It also seems like Monolith soft were a big help to Nintendo in developing more open world concepts (i'm not sure if they also had a hand in pokemon)
No, Monolith wasn't involved in Pokémon despite one of their studios moving to the same building as GameFreak (and other Nintendo-related studios like HAL)
Beat me to that first bit. Not sure about them being part of development for this.
Yet Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is anything but technically stable. Still today it has a ton of performance issues.
@@joaoazevedo3939 The visuals and frame rate in X2 clearly have their problems, and, in a few instances, the resolution just gives up. There's a small section in Tantal where the game looks like literal soup. Not an exaggeration, it looks really bad.
But... even then, it tries harder than any Pokémon game released to date.
@@Minarreal I'm not sure what happened with both Xenoblade games on Switch tbh. Xenoblade Chronicles X on Wii U balanced a locked 720p and 30fps along with a gorgeous and immensely large world.
I genuinely believe this game was supposed to be cell shaded but game freak couldn't be bothered to optimize it so they just removed it. This is pretty much exactly what sun and moon looked like when you removed the cell shading on Citra.
This is a cel shaded game though.
This game is literally cel shaded lol. I assume you’re talking about the black outline Sun/Moon has, that can be removed via emulation? That’s not cel shading.
@@tvsonicserbia5140 Giving everything a glossy/cartoony/simplistic texture doesn't count as cell shading.
Second verse same as the first and also, black outlines are literally a form of cell shading.
@@FROEZOEN the way that the lighter and darker colors on the pokemon are separated makes it very clear that it has cel shading. Not all cel shaded games look good lol.
7:39 "The only downsite to XC2 is the framerate"
I'd argue that the resolution is the bigger problem, 504-720p docked and 368-540p undocked makes the game sadly rather blurry
Main reason why I never finished it on Switch, which I use exclusively as a portable console.
@@Eyeolus It runs flawlessly in 4k on yuzu/ryujinx. You might wanna check it out, because I couldn't believe it myself what kind of difference that is. (Also locked 30fps)
Blurry is a rather nice word on how XC2 looks on Switch portable.
💯💯💯
Wasn't it fixed 720p docked? The one that has dynamic 720p docked is XC1 DE.
I feel like technical issues have always been one of Game Freak's weakest areas. X and Y on the original model of the 3DS had framerate issues all over the place, especially if you tried to use the 3D slider.
I feel like 2ed to 5th gen they where with the times. there was a time where each new system nitnedo put out the next pokemon was a big step up
Pokemon models during battles aside, I've always thought X and Y really didn't take much advantage of the hardware. It looks like something that could've been done on the DS, hell even the textures are unfiltered like a DS game for whatever reason.
Yeah and it’s a shame really, doesn’t even feel like they’re trying sometimes. Even on the new 3DS, and forcing it to use the higher clocks when modded, both X/Y and ORAS still drop to the high teens with the 3D effects on in battle.
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 Might just be that they need a new engine and have just been working on the same one for years and tried to convert it for 3D games....and it's just not working. They could start from the ground up, or simply The Pokemon company in general can outsource the project like they did Smash Bros, but Game Freak probably isn't fond of that idea and only won't care if it's just spin offs
I heard monolith also helped xeno blade games don't look the best starting to thinks it's on purpose.
6:57 "Released in 2017, 2 years after breath of the wild" i'm confused that game has been launched the same year XD
He means the original release date for 'Zelda Wii U.'
@@17Haru17 That'd be a really strange comparison to make, considering that would mean comparing a game that released in 2017 to a game that wasn't released in 2015. They were both released in 2017. I think that line in the video is a mistake as well.
@@17Haru17 no, he messed up both games came out in 2017 there was no Zelda Wii U in 2015
The thing that really,and I mean REALLY got me mad was the wisp collection. Some wisps you can see from a distance away, some don't appear unless I was a foot away. Made it unbelievably frustrating experience.
Wisps are supposed to be difficult to spot during daytime, while they're very visible during nighttime
that's a game mechanic, the girl at the start tells you they appear at night
I'm enjoying this game and at the same time feeling the world's jank. It's brought me a new level of appreciation for the Breath of the Wild world design.
Many games released after BotW (even made specifically for) on Switch make you still appreciate what Nintendo's Zelda-team were able to release. Even Monolithsoft was once again brought in to help GameFreak/TPC develop Pokemon: Arceus. And honestly, Mono has yet to overly impress me since their BotW dev-work as both XBC games have severe visual performance issues in both modes of play. They want to keep stating that Switch's hardware is the problem, but why is it that a game released in 2017 says otherwise still??? XBC2 taught me that I'll gladly take FPS drops in favor of keeping the resolution not dipping to atrocious looking scale ranges for portable play.
The world design is the best part of botw hands down, shame most open world games ignore that in favor of flat empty fields
@@84jesterx And the funny thing is BOTW was a Wii U port. A Wii U port is still one of the best looking games on Switch.
@@dutchguy1807 Exactly! somebody also pointed out Xenoblade Chronicles X to compare against Arceus's flat designs. Like what keeps going on over there at Monolithsoft?
@@84jesterx I mean, TPC is game freak, creatures and nintendo. Game freak is the only developer, the other two companies do nothing but give them shitty deadlines and they don't help while not letting them do what they want. Its really unfortunate but PLA is the first indication of game freak actually getting some fucking freedom
Appreciated the Xenoblade direct comparisons in this. I feel like Monolith Soft really pushes hardware beyond it's limits with them and (at the risk of oversimplifying how complicated game development is, it's not easy to change engines) I'd love to see a Pokémon game that uses the Xenoblade engine. It already has tons of unique enemies/monsters roaming an open world and large teams of swappable party members in XB2, so it's not too far off from a Pokémon style setup as is
I feel like it's definitely safe to say that Monolith Soft's engine continues to impress on Switch hardware after today's Direct haha
Yo im ngl i think arceus might be on monolith's tech. Or at least the botw game tools, it's got similar distance artifacts to botw and xenoblade
@@janus798 I'd be incredibly surprised to be sure. 99% certain it just uses the same game engine Game Freak's been using for all their other Switch games
In portable mode I've found the visuals bearable and not too distracting but docked on a big screen it's embarrassing. Still having fun though!
Tbh I’d say that about most switch games that aren’t fully 1080P
@@lizardonscribes5168 that's pretentious and dumb. Breath of the wild has a solid look and runs at 900p.
@@bz6398 it's not pretentious to dislike non-native resolutions on fixed pixel displays you dolt. Botw looks great because it's simply a good looking game, regardless of resolution. It still looks much worse than if it were native 1080p because upscaling from that lower res introduces tons of aliasing and blurs all the texture work. I've spent many hours emulating the Wii U version, and you'd be surprised what a difference that slight jump to native makes.
All nintendo fans feel obliged to tell us they also enjoy their steaming pile of shit game, raise up standards man that's why we get junk like this and kh
there are GameCube games that look so much better than this
Absolutely great teardown and an awesome analysis.
Just a minor remark - dynamic resolution is enabled in portable as well. Probably it keeps the 720p target 95% of the time, but there are a few spots were it can drop to a lower rez (moving around a pokemon in battle just as its being attacked with a effects heavy attack, thunderbolt/flamethrower/etc, as the player character also drops to the ground). The effects of the drs are mostly visible by lowering the gpu clock with sysclk (obviously).
They really should use a hacked Switch to check for lower bounds, even if only theoretical
Sysclk and ReverseNX are a saving grace for this game.
Increased clock speed on memory and GPU with forced 720p on docked, and the game never once activates DRS and subsequently has headroom which allows for visual mods like extended LOD and better textures/skyboxes.
Almost 7 million in sales in 1 week, there's no excuse. any other developer would've had this game looking a lot better than this. I do love the direction and mechanics. But the graphical issues really take away from the immersion.
They have the biggest excuse of all: they can put out whatever shit on a stick they want and people are going to buy it regardless...
I know that number realistically should piss me off but it really does. Crazy that many people can justify paying $59.99 for this.
Evidently they will set a boatload of these games regardless of quality. It's the "Call of Duty" of Japanese franchises.
They know very well that they can put in very little effort and still make record breaking sales and that is sad
It doesn’t take away from immersion at all, the silent majority obviously feel the same way
“It’s no excuse given the competition”
The most important statement people conveniently forget when trying to explain why Arceus looks so sh*t.
Games from 10 years ago on weaker platforms run games that look a generation ahead of Pokemon.
This is purely Gamefreak’s problem of having a crap engine, and technical incompetence.
Unless we bash them over the head with these criticisms, they will take another 10 years to be bothered to sort their sh*t out.
Except criticism isn't what matters.
Sales are what matter.
So don't buy Arceus.
@@Lucrei. Don’t worry. Not gonna.
@@Lucrei. Yeah. The only reason the pokemon company and game freak will have to seriously rethink their approach of making more profit driven games (eg. low budget / high sales) is by having those games not sell anymore. But it's Pokemon and something very serious would need to happen for the people who keep buying the games to finally say "enough is enough"
@@Lucrei. and if you absolutely have to play it buy it used so GF makes no money
@@Lucrei. Not buying Arceus would also say "hmm i guess people dont want open world gameplay"
I am all for criticism but not buying the game because it looks bad would in fact have the opposite effect
i dont know if anyone has pointed this out yet, but. breath of the wild came out in 2017, not 2015
There are no excuses for all these technical shortcomings when we talk about one of the biggest gaming companies in the world in Gamefreak. I'm always amazed how technically subpar products they make even with all the money in the world. Seems like there is no drive or passion to push things further like what Monolith does.
The problem isn't a Gamefreak problem.We should be blaming Nintendo, the switch is heavily underpowered and they have a constant crutch to work against.
@@Blackwaifus Yet talented developers make works of art that make Arceus seem very questionable in comparison. We should expect more from GF, no matter how you look at things.
@Michael Estwik Exactly. When Nintendo wanted to make Breath of the Wild but had almost no experience in open world games, they just shifted literally half of Monolith inside the company to assist with the project and look how it turned out. GF has all the money and resources to excel in any genre they dabble in but for some reason they decide against it time and time again.
@@Blackwaifus Do you even know how powerful the switch or how other switch game look?
The game is fun, though. So I don't know why it needs nicer looking grass. Will that make it more fun?
Seems like a company with the cash flow of Game Freak could afford to hire some new programmers to the team that actually know what the hell they are doing when it comes to maximizing open world graphics on the Switch's incredibly dated and weak hardware. Breath of the Wild came out in 2017 and blows Arceus away visually.
The don't because they know they will sell millions with little effort
I think most of the money goes to the Pokémon Company.
@@lionheart4424 Gamefreak owns 1/3 of TPC, the other two thirds are Creatures Inc. and Nintendo
Thats not how software development works. You are vastly over simplifying things. No one outside of them will be using their render pipeline and hiring outside people wont't help as much as you think. The fastest way to fix the problem is by keeping the people that already know the most about it until they land on a title that works.
The team behind BoTW have been using their render pipeline to make similar games for ages. That "ages" is the key factor to optimization. Its about experience. No two tools in software development are the same. The only way you can hire a "good" programmer is if you quite literally, build the entire thing from scratch in the lowest level language possible. But then, this game would have come out 3+ years later.
Could say the same for games like cyberpunk, no man's sky, battlefield, GTA definitive...
You guys act like Pokemon is the only one lol
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 came out in 2017, which is the same year Breath of the Wild came out, not two years after.
I think even if you ignore the graphics, the game leaves a lot to be desired. It feels more like a proof of concept than a fully realized game.
Once you play about five hours or so you’ve seen mostly what the game has to offer.
I am so used to DF looking at the latest and greatest tech in games, them reviewing Legends Arceus just feels very off. it really feels like a professional having to reluctantly critic a student work.
Tbh, i dont watch those super next gen game videos from them. Switch games often have smart workarounds to have everything run without breaking apart or, on the other hand, are a mess technically. Those are the most interesting cases.
I dont know whats the point in analyzing something that looks good like RDR2... good res, good fps, it's more circlejerking than an analysis.
Now, figuring out how did Doom 2016 manage to run on switch? I'll definitely watch that
Because there's nothing worth criticizing, people either will spot the terrible graphics themselves or completely don't care then keep throwing money at nintendo
Either way, why should DF give any sh*t to this game when clearly GF themselves don't?
It's "cool" to trash the graphics of this game
This outcome makes me wonder if the original design for the game was meant to be a semi free cam with a top down lock and that choice was changed in later development.
Tbh I wonder why people dont use FOG anymore.
Fog was so much better than "infinite but shitty viewing distance ".
Fog helps the atmosphere of the game, I'm playing Turok remaster and I wouldn't play without it.
I’m so excited to hear their opinions on that 3fps Gyrados in the sky.
There's not much to hear, that technique is pretty common in games to help keep performance stable. Distant objects are animated at lower framerates.
Monster Hunter Rise on the Switch did the same thing.
Not that I'm comparing the graphics quality of the two.
@@Eyeolus Yeah, and we shouldn't notice it. The shaky technical foundation of these games shouldn't be so glaringly hideously obvious or the whole illusion dissipates
@@cosmosofinfinity 7 year old tablet hardware.
@@LocrianDorian That ran lunch games that looked a whole generation newer/better than this garbage does.
Cut to Pokemon Violet!
Thank you for saying it's GameFreak, Been really pissed off lately by people comparing **this** to a company that makes Mario and Zelda.
IDK where the misconception that Pokemon is made by Nintendo came from but it's gotta stop.
I'm still surprise that nobody talks about the gameplay been a similar copy of Megaman legends 1&2, the dodge and throws are mechanics from it, even the style looks similar, how you move in the environment and how you fight bosses, just that in Megaman Legends 1&2 you have more variety of weapons and accessories, and the bosses have way more types of attacks than just shockwaves.
I'm amaze how people could still pay full prize for a game that looks it was release in it's beta test state.
This game's graphics might as well be from some indie developer's Unity game project.
Yikes! That pop in are like 5th/6th console generations! Even back then it’s not as bad as this. Pokémon fans always reward the Pokémon company/GameFreak for half steps towards truly evolving the series. And cause of that they do the bare minimal, incremental or not. To me this is a budget title I’ll wait for on sale or buy second hand. I wouldn’t compare the world to BotW honestly, it’s insulting
Haven’t seen pop in this bad since Daytona on Saturn lol
You get way more effort, polish and care from studios who charge 1/3 of this game’s asking price.
@@MudSluggerBP lol spot on!!
I think it should be obvious by now that their engine just isn’t up to scratch. As you pointed out, there are other open world games on the Switch that both look AND run far better. The examples you gave are all solid, not to mention Mario Odyssey which looks as good as it does while running at a flawless 60fps.
I’m glad that people are enjoying the game and that Game Freak are finally beginning to experiment with the series, but I really wish that either the series would be given to a better developer, or GF would bring in a new engine or new engine development team.
Graphics /are/ gameplay in a big exploratory open world game.
They changed engines when they started making switch games. Let's Go, Sword/Shield, and Arceus all use the same engine. The engine probably has its issues, but a lot of the graphical issues is more than likely due to Game Freak's inexperience with 3D HD graphics.
@Michael Estwik Same/Similar graphics between two games does not necessarily mean they are running on the same engine. When the Let's Go games came out, datamines showed that the Let's Go games file/folder structure and codebase were different from the 3DS pokemon games. This is a very common indicator that a different engine was used for the Let's Go games. When Sword and Shield came out, dataminers confirmed that the codebase of Sword/Shield is a "fork" of the Let's Go games. This means they take a copy of the Let's Go software and simply rework it and add to it, meaning same engine as Let's Go. As for Legends Arceus, it is a "fork" of Sword/Shield.
References:
@kaphotics (twitter) (A pokemon dataminer)
I'm surprised you didn't cover the weird lighting bug causing the pink highlights on the ground and rocks near edges of the map shown even at @01:40
Could they not just go back to sticking fog in to cover up the pop in like n64/Ps1? What’s the point of seeing elements in the background if they just break immersion?
Indeed. It's utterly impressive how incompetent gamefreak are, given the old and rich company that they are.
While i agree that fog is nice for hide out the unnecesary rendering, its kinda dont work well for this game,..
back then most psx/n64 use fog as part of the game plot/theme/narrative,..e.g. Silent Hill on PSX, Legend of Zelda Majora Mask on n64
@@KaizAmari gta san andreas on ps2 has aggressive orange fog because of the draw distance issue and that’s just give the game more charm to it
Background stuff could be 2D sprites that turn into 3D objects when approaching. I think Mario Odyssey did that. The problem isn't as much that they just appear than that it happens out of nowhere, which makes the pop-in much more noticeable and jarring.
Fog sucks
Quick notice: Xenoblade 2 was not 2 years after BotW, it was the same year actually.
It's great to see them finally trying something different with the pokemon formula and I hope they make more like this in the future. Disappointed that the visuals are pretty sub par even for the Switch. Wish they could collab with another studio to handle the graphics or something but I just don't think they care too much but I know modders will definitely make it look better
Good analysis. I've got the cavern thingy yesterday and yeah I almost thought it was a bug at first.
Personally I haven't noticed the framerate issue on docked, but I wasn't paying that much attention.
Two others things I've noticed : colors can be *really* weird (some weird shadowy purple lines appears on trees and rocks) and on dock rain can drastically affect performances sometime (less undocked). It's really noticeable.
Aside from that, the game is "fine" undocked imo. It have a ton of technical issue, but it's not too horrible (at least compared to some games like Deadly Premonition 1 & 2, but I'm taking quite the extreme case here xD). But docked it's...rough. Really rough. Yes Switch have limitation, but like the video said, there's a lot of exemples of way better open world on it technically. I just think that GF have trouble transitionning to HD with the Switch, and should hire more ppls for that or seek help from others companies.
But overall, despite those issues, I have a blast with the game, and I hope the technical side of it and the gameplay formula get improved in later games
I would argue that it's a bug, of all the visual problems mentioned in the video that was the one that took me out of it the most, it was really distracting. In a similar vein, objects that overlap transparencies look really bad as well, with really obvious pixellation artifacts at the edges, it's super obvious when you throw a pokeball at a pokemon in the water. Surprised that wasn't mentioned in the video either.
@@hollenwanderer oh yeah I think I saw that one too and yeah it was pretty bad.
What do you mean you "almost thought it was a bug"? The video said something similar. Why is it not a bug? People seem to have a weird definition of what a bug is. That's clearly a bug, just like everything else this video was talking about.
I like this video. It is fair in criticism but also highlighted in the end that it IS a breath of fresh air when it comes to pokemon. It's a good template. Maybe if this released a few years ago, it wouldn't be compared so much with other games but yes, THIS is a step in the right direction. Meanwhile Scarlet and Violet.... oof.
And we thought this looked bad, now with SV, this game looks like real life graphics
While it's not the first Pokémon game on the Switch, this is the first game that I feel like they're really trying to get the most out of the Switch with something new outside of the 3DS game formula. (Let's face it... Sword/Shield looked more like Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon but in HD)
It's really nice to see a Pokemon game finally evolving and becoming what we always wanted to have, paying attention to small details ( like some ways that the Pokémon interact with you following the logic of the Pokedex ) and in a vast ''open world'', I believe this is due to the fact that Masuda is no longer involved in the franchise, let's face it he did great things in the past, but since the sixth generation I feel like he was limiting the game series a lot and holding it back.
There's still a lot to evolve, but I hope Legends will serve as a foundation for what Pokémon should become in the future.
Yeah... Masuda even lying some times just to justify the lack of content.
2:53 - Holy Jesus...who needs random encounters when stuff pops up five feet ahead of you, anyway?
This is the first video in a while to actually give me a headache to watch. I will definitely be passing on this game unless they get it fixed.
won't get fixed...
The switch is weak
the fact legends and monster hunter rise runs on the switch at all is a modern marvel
What's the music at the beginning of the video? I feel like I know what it is and I can't quite place it :/
07:00 - Xenoblade was released six months after Breath of the Wild. BoTW also released in 2017, Switch didn't release before 2017.
Fixed 720P in portable is huge though. I'm all in for those graphics and a 1:1 resolution. I can't stand the 240P approach some games took in the lifetime of the switch - and yes I'm talking about doom and Wolfenstein.
It really does seem meant for portable play.
They had to be 240p because Switch is a weak ass console. What more do you want?
@@YumiSumire What about not doing ports that run and look like ass.
@@RobOngrui what about porting them so who wants to play them can play them? You're not the only customer.
Did they not bother making intermediate LoD's, or could they not budget memory/bandwidth for it?
Also, that tiled water at 9:53 ... yikes.
Didnt game freak say the "lets go" games were for them to get used to the hardware, then say "sword and sheild" lacked pokemon because it was striving for asset quality, then give the sinnoh remakes to a different company to focus on this? Seems to me that these guys have far more experience with the switch than any of the devs from 2017... yet still make lackluster looking games.
A nitpick, I know... but Xenoblade 2 was released in Dec. 2017, same year as BotW (Mar. 2017). The games were months apart, and Monolith did help with parts of BotW. Xenoblade DE came out in 2020 (and did look better than 2 in some ways).
6:58 Xenoblade 2 "released in 2017, 2 years after Breath of the Wild"
LOL what??? How? Switch, BotW and XC2 all came out 2017. Where does this 2 year gap come in?
Maybe he was talking about torna
"other open world games on switch"
-*stares in Breath of the Wild*
A correction for the video. It is stated that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was released "in 2017, two years after Breath of the Wild". However, both these games were released the same year.
- Breath of the Wild in March 2017
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in December 2017.
It's the way them rocks pop in in the distance that bug me the most from what I've seen here. If they were small I doubt I'd notice much but they're actual major elements of the scenery. Surely they could chuck in on more smaller lower res grey blob before it appears. Enough that it doesn't look like the world is being built just over the river. Gotta say though, the way it handles battles and the scale of the pokemon does look pretty danged nice.
A seemingly great change in direction for the series in terms of mechanics, but such a shame about some of the visual aspects. The water looks like something straight out of the early PS3 / 360 area... hopefully the next entry will blend the new mechanics with better technical presentation.
The GameCube had better looking water, on Pikmin, for example :)
I don't know of any PS3 games that look this bad.
@@CrimzonAE Mario Sunshine says hello
I think the issue is definitely the developers. Gamefreak seems to be too used to working within certain limitations. All the same this is a wonderful step and I hope they keep going.
no mention of every npc just standing still in town every shot, the lady sweeping creates 0 dust sand and snow dosent leave footprints seems like a not fully done video
@ 6:57 Hello Digital Foundry??? Breath of the Wild released in 2017... same launch day of the Nintendo Switch and well Xenoblade Chronicles 2 released in the same year 2017. So no its not 2 years after Breath of the Wild.
Personally I had a decent amount of fun with this game but it is nowhere near as good as critics say. 7 out of 10.
2:06 how the buildings not even connect to the ground...it is a great step and I am excited about it, but still feel the lack of polish and quality is depressing.
The bar was low Game Freak...
What a mess, someone please give this SH capable people to work on their games, it's not possible to have that amount of revenue and ship out a technical garbage like this.
The pop-in is terrible, but seeing the game running at 60fps on an emulator, the graphics look fine to me.
I _was_ going to say that this still looks leagues better than anything they had when I was growing up... but then I went and looked at some Star Fox Adventures (2002) screenshots again.
SFA has more geometric detail, sharper textures, fancier effects, and a largely stable 60fps. Though there are narrow corridors between all the areas, so it's not a true open world. But still.
Zelda BOtW looks way better than PLA and it came out in 2017!
I have completed the game and ploughing through the end game stuff. I can honestly say that the only issue that has ever made me think badly about the graphics is there is a weird flickering to the grass sometimes. Other than that I personally wasn't distracted by the graphics, it's an outstanding game!!
6:55 I think Breath of the Wild came out March 2017 and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 came out December 2017.
Thanks to the game being this low on graphics, i can emulate it at playable speeds on my old laptop! The gameplay sure is great, its like playing red all over again!
I feel like switching to a different engine could be the solution. Whatever engine that Game Freak has been using since X/Y just really seems to struggle and the more complex the games get, the worse the compromises seem to be. I don't know if switching to something like Unreal Engine would fix that, but I have a hard time believing they couldn't do everything they're already doing, both graphically and gameplay-wise, and perhaps more, if they moved to UE4/5. And if a more powerful Switch revision ever does materialize before a true next-gen machine does, UE5's Nanite might even function so long as the NAND Flash(The latest standard can hit 2.9GB/s which is faster than the uncompressed speed of the Series S/X) is fast enough or if they switch to a full on 2230 SSD(This is just the physical size of the SSD, not its storage size or speed. A 2230 M.2 SSD is what is used in the Series S/X(Might be wrong about that, but it's definitely no larger than a 2250), much more compact than your typical 2280 M.2 SSD and thus could fit inside the chassis of a Switch.). Point being that moving to a new engine has the potential to solve Game Freak's problems, but it really comes down to The Pokemon Company and Nintendo actually giving them the budget necessary to not afford the fees associated, but to also give it ample development time and resources to be the best it can be. Right now they just treat Pokemon as a money-printing machine quality control be damned, gotta spend as little as possible to make more.
Or they just optimzie their own engine, switching to a different engine would mean training all the devs for it which could take much longer than optimizer the current engine.
an engine also doesn't magically make everything run better. each game needs to be tweaked.
I'd be really curious to see what new mobile Nvidia silicon with some tensor cores could do. Like enabling DLSS, perhaps. UE5's Nanite really complements their new Lumen renderer, which uses software raytracing and mesh distance fields in concert with a few other techniques to simulate more accurate lighting, with less of a performance hit than full raytraced global illumination. I like that approach, and I'd love to see a new Switch offer some hardware acceleration for this technique. Things like this and reconstruction techniques like DLSS could really allow next-gen mobile hardware to punch well above its weight. I think you'll see a bit of that wow factor w/ the Steam deck.
I just don't see how this isn't unacceptable for Nintendo's quality standard
Because it’s a high quality game.
Graphics ≠ quality
@@pramath1605 game freak burner account
@@Sluggwurth man what a sad standard for discussion this is when shit posts like yours in response to something as simple and innocuous as “a game is more than its graphics” have multiple upvotes
If graphics is the only standard of quality for you then I have some bad news.
Because the game is solid, and Nintendo doesn't have as much control as you think over Pokemon development. Also considering the money they make, they're not gonna fuss like they do have control over it.
7:04 Big mistake, Xenoblade 2 was released the same year as Breath of the Wild
I think the main problem, is that the world feels empty, Zelda for example, has a lot of different flowers, plants and trees in the same place, some bug flying around, good water reflection, this one feels like just have grass, some rocks and That's pretty much it, it feels more like a video game than a world
I almost prefer the emptiness. Anything I see is important. I know what everything is the moment its in view. Video games have a huge readability issue these days. Id happily take better graphics, but not at the cost of the super read-able world
@@Wylie288 good point, I had this issue with Red Dead Redemption 2 and horizon zero dawn, Is hard to see exactly what is "part of the game" and things that are not.
Still, I think Pokemon could have done a better job with the environment in a few parts of the map without disrupt the gameplay
Gamefreak has always been an incompetent developer.
And yet this game is really fun XD they did something right obviously
With the amount of money they have made from this franchise it’s just jarring how little they put into it. It makes no sense to me.
See: GTA3 definitive edition
The water looks like crap when you're flying, really bad and very visible tiled effect.
What’s the music in the beginning?
This is the path Pokemon needs to go and please do not go back to the old formula but the graphic and artstyle aspects are really awful and dont tell me is the Switch because we had Xenoblade 2, Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey and many more. Not even the GameCube games look that bad.
Mario odyssey looks gorgeous and plays in 60fps truly a marvel. This game while i love the gameplay and cant put it down the graphics are lackluster.
The GameCube Pokémon games literally reuse N64 models though. The older Pokémon, particularly Gen 1, don't look up to the standard of a GameCube game, and I think people forget this was a hotly criticised move a decade and a half ago. And they're STILL reused in Battle Revolution too.
Too bad with all the complaining and whining gamefreak will probably go back to what they were doing.
They tried something new and all people did was complain about the graphics.
I've heard tons of complaints about the graphics on Switch pokemon I've been playing it for a few days now and it doesn't really bother me much when I'm playing
There are PS2 ganes that look better
@@Jonas-ej7id name 1
I don't notice it either. The games fun. I'm like 44 hours in, there's constantly 5-10 friends on my list playing it all the time.
Graphics and fun are two very different things.
@@UnexpectedDanger
1?
I'll name 5
God of War 2
Shadow of Colossus
Resident Evil 4
Final Fantasy XII
MGS 3
That flicker where the engine can't decide if it should render or not - I've had that on some grass... That I was literally standing on!
The overworld exploration update is great. The lack of at least some graphical polish relative to the money printing ability, as mentioned, is not though. Also a watered down battle system is not a good sign for the upcoming Scarlet and Violet. Hopefully the return to the old combat system.
Slight correction, Tom;
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 released about 8 months after BOTW rather than 2 years.
Thanks for the video all the same!
Might I add, there's a typo in the LGPE segment. It's Eevee, not Evee. Again, thanks for the analysis!
Showing those crazy beautiful open world games on Switch and then cutting back to pokemon is just.. Mean.. But in a deserved way :D For the biggest franchise in the world, this is just plain bad.
The problem is Game Freak being lazy developers who know that no matter how low quality their games are, they will still sell millions regardless thus they take advantage of that fact. Pokemon as a good game franchise is dead as long as Game Freak keeps making them.
"beautiful open world games on Switch"
Yeah, the beautiful *364p* in Xenoblade in handheld-mode. Don't get me wrong I love XC2 and XC:DE and they would be incredible looking games but only in theory. In reality they are really held back by the resolution and tbh I'd rather play Legends Arceus in 720p in handheld mode than XC in as low as 364p.
BotW on the other side looks great and has a great resolution, that's true
Great vid but a couple of corrections; Monster Hunter Rise is 756p on Switch, not 720p, and Xenoblade 2 came out the same year as Breath of the Wild, not two years after.
To be fair to the devs, the last new Pokemon game came out in 2019 on switch, while the last new Zelda game came out on Wii in 2011. AKA we got 5 new games (excl. remakes) from gamefreak while 0 Zelda games.
I don't get why we're even talking about frame rate when the environments look like a PS2 game and the models are literally 9 years old.
To me it's funny (a funny kind of sad) to see people defend the visual in Legends Arceus as part of its "artstyle": "it's imitating traditional japanese art".
But that's clearly bogus when you remember games like Okami, World of Demons and GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon, all of them pulling said artstyle flawlessly.
*In reality Legends Arceus lacks any sort of art direction.*
Thank you for bringing up Okami.
"it's not an art style because I said so!"
BotW and XBC2 both got released in 2017, not 2 years apart.
For comparison, Breath of the Wild runs amazing on the Switch and the Wii U. I played it on both and only sometimes I saw some stutter. It really is a very well optimized game.
"amazing" is beyond far fetched, especially on Wii U with its double buffer vsync. But mostly good enough.